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Friday, 8 May 2015

Shocked and Saddened

In the wake of the UK General Election I am left deeply shocked and saddened.

But not for the reason you might think.

This is not a post about my political standpoint or my personal opinion of the election result. In any way.

It is a post about being a human being moved by the behaviour of other human beings.

But not in a good way.

I have truly been sickened to hear and read online the way people are talking about and to each other...ripping each other to shreds. It is shocking. And it saddens me that people treat each other like that, whatever the reason.

Regardless of our opinions. Regardless of our standpoints. Regardless of our own personal situation or journey, we are all human beings. We are all people. We are not who we vote for or what we believe...we are people...human beings not human doings or human votings.

We are supposed to be a compassionate being. We are supposed to be blessed with empathy and understanding. We've all learnt about being polite and about treating each other with respect and kindness.

But all of this went out of the window last night and today, not to mention the months long lead up.

I get that people are passionate and I love that (but who cares what I think or love, that's not the point). Passion is fantastic. It gets things done, it moves and motivates people. But rudeness? Aggression? Insults and quite frankly revolting language aimed personally at other individual people (not politicians, every day people who may or may not have crossed a certain box)? Passion is supposed to inspire, not incite. I am certainly not inspired by some of the words I have been reading over the last few days. I am horrified.

It's pretty clear very many people agree that the whole system is totally rubbish...but it's the one we've got and calling each other names probably isn't going to mend it. If the politicians all want to call each other names and bully each other that's their call but why do we all have to jump on their rude bandwagon we're so vehemently arguing about in the first place? And the way to convince other people to vote for your party (whichever it is) is not to reduce ourselves to sewer rats. It's neither clever, nor dignified, nor what many would either aspire to or want to be associated with.

I am lost for words.

I know I am what's known as a highly sensitive person and therefore I will be absorbing every single insult, jibe, remark and coarse comment I see splashed about the internet much more acutely than others and that perhaps to many people it'll be like water off a ducks back. But I just can't accept that this type of behaviour is ok.

In fact I'm pretty sure it isn't. Ever. For anybody. In any type of situation.

I am seriously knocked for six. I've not been able to stop thinking about it all day. Every new comment or article or post I see hurts, but I can't stop looking...it's like picking off that scab that keeps growing back just to check if it still hurts (it does). It makes me feel sick and I don't understand it.

I haven't and am not going to disclose who I voted for nor what I think of the election result. This isn't about that.

But if there was ever going to have been a result that would have kept us from beating down each others doors, from throwing fiery tongued flames over each others fences, from becoming wild, aggressive and quite frankly revolting animals...then that's what I would have voted for.

I would have voted for a way for people to express themselves without insulting their neighbour. To be passionate without being personal. To debate and argue, yes...I love a good argument. But without the slanging and fisty cuffs. No thank you. We don't need that.

I seriously cannot express how strongly or how deeply I feel about this, yet I have managed to express all of this without uttering a single profanity, without naming anybody else, without threatening anything or anybody. And it wasn't that hard to do because of how passionately I felt about it.

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About Me

I'm positively passionate, passionately positive and busy blogging about all things happiness. When I'm not reading or writing about the powers of positive psychology I can be found behind my camera indulging in my other passion: photography.

I write 2 blogs, one about happiness and one about food...which makes me happy :). I also run a facebook page called The Happy Catalyst.